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'Party' politics: Judge blames clash for photo's release

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Special to Times-Shamrock Newspapers
Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr., left, is all smiles during a party in June 2005 with Forty Fort attorney John H. Kennedy, convicted drug dealer Ronald Belletiere, then-county Judge Michael T. Conahan at a condominium in Florida. Olszewski, who is pursuing a second, 10-year term believes the photo was submitted to damage his retention campaign.

Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said a photo of him partying with a convicted drug dealer and former judge/accused racketeer Michael T. Conahan was leaked to media outlets Thursday to damage his retention campaign.

Olszewski said he was unaware of either man's alleged criminal activities when the photo was taken in 2005.

"It's obviously being done to embarrass me before the election," Olszewski said of the photo, which shows him, Conahan, the convicted dealer and a Luzerne County attorney holding drinks and liquor bottles in a Florida condominium that Conahan allegedly used to launder kickbacks in the kids-for-cash case.

In a tense, hour-long interview with The Citizens' Voice editors and reporters Thursday, Olszewski said he believes the June 2005 photo was mailed anonymously to the media by Conahan and/or his codefendant, former county Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. to hurt his bid for a second 10-year term in November.

"If you publish this, you're doing Mark's bidding," Olszewski said. "You're doing what the most corrupt judges in the world want you to do."

Olszewski said he clashed with Ciavarella during Ciavarella's last months as president judge, before Ciavarella and Conahan were charged in the kids-for-cash scandal in January. Olszewski said he disagreed with a lawsuit Ciavarella filed against the county commissioners to stall proposed cuts in court staffing and other administrative decisions made by Ciavarella.

Olszewski said shortly after Ciavarella's arrest in January, Ciavarella left him a "rambling," angry voice mail message "castigating" him for comments he made to the media about Ciavarella's tenure as president judge.

Olszewski said three people have told him Ciavarella is still "seething" over the criticism.

Through his attorney, Al Flora Jr., Ciavarella said the accusation that he was the source of the photo was "absolutely not true." Conahan declined comment through his attorney.

The two former judges face racketeering, bribery, money laundering and other charges for allegedly accepting $2.8 million in kickbacks in 2003-2006 for helping two for-profit juvenile detention centers secure county contracts. Some of the money was deposited with a company controlled by the judges that owns the condo and falsely recorded as rental payments, federal prosecutors say.

Olszewski said he was unaware of the judges' alleged kickbacks scheme in 2005 when he was a guest at the condo for a golfing trip that lasted several days. He said he was also unaware that a visitor to the condo, Ronald Belletiere, was a convicted drug dealer, although Conahan told him near the end of the trip that Belletiere had been rehabilitated following a sentence for "minor" drug charges.

"If I thought Judge Conahan, who was president judge, was committing a crime, not in a billion years would I have been anywhere near him," Olszewski said. Olszewski said he was aware of allegations made in the 1990s that Conahan had ties to drug dealers, but a state Judicial Conduct Board investigation never yielded any action against the judge.

Conahan's name surfaced during Belletiere's 1991 federal trial in the "Empire" drug case involving cocaine trafficking in Hazleton in the 1980s, when Conahan was a magisterial district judge in the city. A government witness in U.S. District Court in Scranton alleged Conahan had put him in touch with Belletiere as a source for cocaine.

Conahan was never charged in the case, but during a "sidebar" conversation between lawyers and the presiding judge out of the jury's earshot, a prosecutor called Conahan an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the case, according to a transcript.

Belletiere and two other figures in the Empire case gave information about an unnamed "public official" to the state Judicial Conduct Board, attorneys in the case said in 1994, just months after Conahan's election to the Luzerne County bench.

In August 1994, Conahan held a press conference to deny he had referred anyone to Belletiere to buy drugs, but acknowledged knowing Belletiere. The conduct board has never confirmed that it investigated Conahan over the allegations.

Belletiere, who was released from prison in 1995, could not be reached for comment Thursday,

Olszewski said it was only in July 2008, when The Citizens' Voice reported that Conahan's wife, Barbara, owned an interest in a South Florida used-car business that Belletiere operated in 2004-2007, that he made the connection between Belletiere and allegations against Conahan in the Empire drug case. Olszewski said that by then, the federal investigation into Ciavarella and Conahan was public knowledge and he did not confront Conahan.

"I wanted to in the worst way, but what would be the point? Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor," Olszewski said.

Olszewski's account of the Florida trip was corroborated by John H. Kennedy, a Forty Fort attorney who was also on the trip.

Kennedy, Olszewski and their dates flew with Conahan and his wife to Florida aboard a private jet owned by Hazleton businessman Joseph Gans. Conahan had purchased miles on the jet as a present to his wife, Kennedy said. Efforts to reach Gans were unsuccessful Thursday.

Olszewski said he paid Conahan $400 for his own flight. Kennedy and the two women who accompanied them did not pay, according to Kennedy and Olszewski, who was estranged from his first wife at the time.

Kennedy said the 2005 visit to the condo, his first and last, was offered to him by Conahan after he supplied free legal representation to the county's court stenographers during a salary dispute with the county controller's office.

Kennedy said he was unaware of Conahan's and Belletiere's alleged ties to the Empire drug case.

"I did not connect the dots. I was not aware of the accusation of ties between him and Conahan," Kennedy said.

Olszewski, a former Luzerne County district attorney and the son of a former state Superior Court judge, said Conahan did a "terrible thing" by placing him in the company of a drug felon.

"The only relation I ever had with drug dealers was to prosecute them and as a judge to sentence them after they've been found guilty by a jury," Olszewski said.

"I had a father who was the most honest judge in the world. I thought all judges were like that. I was wrong."

Michael R. Sisak, staff writer, contributed to this report.

djanoski@citizensvoice

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10 posted comments

Where is the story here? If PPO did something wrong, where's his indictment? Where is the evidence of wrongdoing? Pictures like this tend to come out when there is no story. If there was one, we would have heard it by now.The fact that the criminal judges want so badly to stick it to PPO tells me he didn't have anything to do with their corruption. The fewer defendants involved capable of bringing new information and evidence to light the better. Bringing down another guilty party does them no good. Bringing down an innocent judge would obviously give them satisfaction and allows them one more injustice on their way out the door. If you let them get away with it, then they've played you too.A certain segment of the population is going to see this "journalism" and believe that a good man was involved in something he wasn't - just like a large segment of the population can't find Iraq on a map, despite the fact that U.S. troops have been there since 2003.

N, even Obama said [paraphrased] "judge me by the people I associate with." Well, PPO associates with convicted drug dealers and soon-to-be-convicted judges who thought nothing of selling kids to the detention center for years. Your friends tell a lot about you, like it or not. PS The Conahan drug smuggling into PA has been known around Hazleton for a LOOOONG time - no one would listen.

This has been going on several decades. The right information just got into the right hands that wanted to clean up the corruption. Many of nights the town was happy due to Conahan and Belletiere. Thanks to the proper people that is cleaning it up BUT....why are they not in jail waiting? If it would have been a citizen they would have been gone by now.....WHY?

You can tell a lot of a person by their friends or who they associate with.

He who loses his reputation, loses his shame.

It is troubling knowing that Lupas may be one of the few left in office. Although it has not been inquired about much in the media, I find it odd and very telling that if the allegations against Conahan & Ciavarella are correct with respect to defendents being denied counsel, why didn't either the prosecutor, public defender office, or any of the other lawyers speak up and file a complaint against the judges?

One thing is for sure, no one in the Luzerne County legal system has BOTH courage and integrity.

Didn't anyone ever tell him that the Feds supposedly had that photo many months ago? Why is he blaming it on Ciavarella? What a weenie excuse, except that most people, those who have not followed the corruption scandal closely, would fall for his excuse easily.

Nice to know guilt by association is alive and well. Come on, haven't you all read that Con and Ciav ruled the courthouse like tyrants. Everyone was kept in the dark. PPO included. To say that he should of known is asking way to much. How about calming down and realizing that we actually need good judges like PPO and Burke around? Else Lupas will be the only elected Judge left standing, and I don't think our county can survive with so few judges.

Um, hate to be the one to tell you this, Pete, but if you hadn't been partying with Conahan and his druggie friends, there would be no picture to use against your election. Duh.As far as I'm concerned, you're fired. And I WAS going to vote for you.

Oh, and I was born yesterday too. If you are dumb enough to not have had a clue these past few years (even while down in FL), you should NOT be a judge in this county or anywhere. We require some level of brains and guts.

Olszewski is too much of a boy scout to be corrupt. He does let his emotions and opinions trump law in his courtroom though. He is a lousy judge who made questionable trips with criminals. As he has said so many times in his courtroom. You have to live with the decisions you make. This was not one of his better decisions.